Blog Post

Penny for our Thoughts…

A great idea is like a flash of lightning,

all you can do is try to capture it in a bottle.

There we were, after 5 months of intensive schedules on how to market our business idea, how to find the potential customers , running a need analysis, learning of how to think and shape the ideal business idea, and calculating and predicting ratio analysis, it was time for us to start bringing out ideas of our own. But imagination does not work full throttle if restricted to four walls.So we took a small ideation trip. Yes, you read quite well “ideation” there was no such word in the Webster’s, yet.

A small ideation trip to the beautiful jungles of Pench, Madhya Pradesh.

Lemon team at Riverwood Retreats, Pench Madhya Pradesh..

At a beautiful resort called The Riverwood Retreats, in the afternoon as soon as we gathered in the meeting lounge,That is when Rajeev sir announced that it was time for one of the most important stages of our 9 months journey. We were given a piece of paper and and told to write down all the ideas that come to our mind, anything that we are able to imagine as a business idea. all together we were given 3 hours in the first day only to bring our ideas on the canvas. For that period of time, the atmosphere was boundary less to me. We could sit anywhere we want (in the bounds of the huge resort of course), relax ourselves as we want so as to get our mind and ideas into place. And once let gone, our minds never stopped since then, we found ourselves our spots, and it felt as if they were reserved specially for us. Personally I never imagined myself sitting in the luggage trolley like Aksh did.

Aksh unloading his ideas while sitting in the trolley.

We went to Pench so that we could fill our canvas in Mother Nature’s lap, Kishore actually did it, he found a small place between trees on slide to write his ideas down while enjoying Mother Nature’s humble and unconditional hospitality. It seemed like Kishore’s inner child had met the genius and were both having a good time together.

Kishore, adding strokes to his canvas.

Keshav decided to relax his nerves and take a seat at the pool. The cloudy weather was the icing on the cake as he was able to come up almost 50 ideas of his own (not kidding). If you that is too much, You should know that Gaurav was able to come up with 67 business ideas. After lunch was when we started the actual and sorting and funneling of our ideas. We maintained a track of all our ideas (starting with a total 386 ideas) and as the day proceeded the idea meter started narrowing. On the basis of boot strapping, abilities , our experience in the domain of our ideas we chucked them one by one, rather saved them for the generations to come. Although we did visit our old ideas frequently and we still do but we have taken up our final ideas for the Pilot in the upcoming months.

The circle of ideas.

At the end of Day 1 at Pench we had completed the initial stage of scrutinizing our ideas. Post sessions it had only started. We were still discussing our business ideas with each other. The conversation did not break until a small toad managed to crawl up my foot during dinner. That is where the chuckles began. We took a small stroll in the jungle at night after dinner. And it was as beautiful as the might trek we took while at Ramtek endurance camp. The experience was a very unusual for me because I never never went to the jungle just to think about business ideas, I had heard abut corporate retreats but nothing like this.